


sunflower butter

by friedgalaxies



Series: otsuchi soul [4]
Category: Naruto
Genre: Flowers, Food as a Metaphor for Love, Gen, Superstition, Traditions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:54:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,975
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26148250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/friedgalaxies/pseuds/friedgalaxies
Summary: At the edge of the Akimichi compound where it fades into the dense Nara forests, there is a field of sunflowers.
Relationships: Aburame Shino & Hyuuga Hinata, Akimichi Chouji & Hyuuga Hinata
Series: otsuchi soul [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1843909
Kudos: 13





	sunflower butter

**Author's Note:**

> recommended listening while reading this is tangerine by glass animals !

At the edge of the Akimichi compound where it fades into the dense Nara forests, there is a field of sunflowers. 

It’s good luck amongst the family, to plant the sunflowers, to tend them. Superstition has it that if you plant a sunflower before a baby is born, they’ll grow up as big and strong as the sunflower does. There are some, who marry into the Akimichi family instead of being born into it, that don’t believe in the superstition and don’t plant a sunflower with their partner before a baby is due to be born. Chouji tries not to think about the cousins that perish, about the babies that are born too weak, about the shinobi that die in the midst of battle with the Akimichi clan symbol engraved into the shape-shifting chestplate they wear. He doesn’t want to chalk it up to a parent’s negligence, but he’s also always been a fairly superstitious man. 

Every summer, when the sunflowers reach high, high into the blue of the sky, taller than the tallest of his aunts and uncles and cousins, Chouji goes into the field with a wheelbarrow and a machete and cuts down sunflower heads. They’re twice the size of his two spread hands, easy, even as big as they are. Yellow petals the shade of laughter and hundreds of little brown seeds, shaped like raindrops and streaked white and tan. He is one of many cutting down sunflower heads, and one of even more following behind to cut the stalks, towers of green fiber collected in tall baskets that’ll go on to be dried and used for kindling, or studded into compost piles outside humming kitchens, or eaten fresh out of the field. Chouji can fondly recall summer afternoons spent with his grandmother, following along behind her and her tall wicker basket strapped to her back, collecting the leaves that fell and the stalks that got left behind. 

Summer for Chouji is sunflower fields and fresh sunflower butter and the snap of green stalks between teeth that’re just this side of too sharp. 

The kitchen in the Main House is empty when Chouji returns from the sunflower fields one afternoon, wheelbarrow full of sunflower heads exchanged for a burlap sack that he won’t get in trouble for dragging into the kitchen through the back door. He drops loose leaf litter behind him anyhow, probably shaking free from the voluminous waves and loose curls of his hair where it’s been scraped back into a high tail at the crown of his head. He gives his head a cursory shake and three more leaves fall out onto the wooden floors. He makes a note to sweep later, which he’ll need to do anyhow with the inevitable mess that comes with the sunflower harvests. 

He’s just set the heads out to finish drying-- they’ll be ready to be harvested of the seeds in a week or two’s time-- in the corner of the tea room with it’s big picture windows they use just for sundries when there’s a hesitant knock at the front door. He changes his path from the well known route to the kitchen and veers towards the door instead, broom and dustpan in one hand and twisting his hair up into a loose approximation of a bun with the other. 

He blinks in surprise upon opening the door, because even though he’s seen her outside of the Hyuuga compound plenty of times and run team missions with her even more, it’s still strange to see Hinata on his doorstep-- with what looks like a basket of ripe peaches in hand, as well. 

He knows her, of course, they were in the same graduating class and their teams mesh well together, what with team 8’s speciality being tracking and 10’s being information gathering (which seems a pretty gentle word for the type of interrogation they use, but he’s not the one assigning team superlatives) but he doesn’t Know Her know her, per say. She’s more of Ino’s friend than she is Chouji’s, considering that kunoichi seem to have some kind of telepathic bond that Chouji doesn’t think he’ll ever understand. 

But either way, Hinata Hyuuga is standing on his doorstep with a basket of ripe peaches in arm, shuffling her feet and looking anywhere but his eyes, even though she can’t see much of them without her Byakugan activated in the first place. Chouji isn’t exactly sure of the extent of her vision loss and he’s not rude or upfront enough to ask directly about it. He’d ask Neji, considering they at least spend more time together than Chouji does with Hinata, but he also isn’t looking to face the cold heat of Neji’s death glare anytime soon. 

“Hello, Hinata!” Chouji says, opening the wide door even wider to let her in. “What brings you by the Akimichi Head House?” 

“Uhm,” she murmured, and even though they’d all grown much more confident and sure of their skills in the years since graduation, Hinata’s anxiety was a kind that wouldn’t leave until it was forcibly evicted. She thrust the basket out in front of her in lieu of explanation, tacking on a hasty, “p-peaches.” 

“I see! These smell wonderful, were they harvested recently? Come in, come in.” He ushered her inside with a broad sweep of one huge arm, shutting the door behind her with a click. It remained unlocked, because there were few that dared enter the Akimichi compound with ill intentions, but he wasn’t so daring as to leave the door ajar and let in all the crawling critters that sought sanction from the burning Konoha sunlight that filtered through the dense canopy. “Are you hungry? I’ll make you something to eat.” 

“Y-y-you… you d-d-don’t have to,” she whispered, following Chouji into the kitchen. He aims a beaming smile at her, hoping it would soothe at least some of the nerves she carried around constantly like a coat. He wondered if she ever had the time to put it down. He didn’t know much about the innermost workings of the Hyuuga compound, nor their Headmost family, but he’d been there a few times, as Clan Heir. Hiashi Hyuuga and his quiet, structured, traditional home in its monochrome colors was one of the starkest contrasts Chouji had ever seen to the Akimichi compound and its bright, sunny, loud people, always laughing, having good natured spars and joking arguments over big meals. Neji was close-lipped about it, as vile as he found the disconnect between their Head and Branch families and his open disdain for the Caged Bird Seal branded into his forehead beneath the hitai-ate; and Hinata all but openly shook with nerves when the subject was broached, carefully redirecting before the questions could get more than cursory. 

(“It’s been a pleasure, Hiashi-san, Hinata-hime.” Chouza said with a bow, inclining his head in turn. Chouji echoed his sentiments and bowed alongside his father, slipping Hinata a peek of a soft smile underneath the loose fall of his hair. Hinata bowed her head, keeping her gaze low on the tatami mats beneath their folded legs. 

“A pleasure as always, Chouza-san.” Hiashi said, even though his tone of voice communicated to Chouji that it was anything but. Chouza smiled that leonine grin of his and turned to address Hinata, pointedly ignoring the burning gaze Hiashi directed into the side of his head. Any harder and Chouji was sure his hair would spark up into flames. 

“And Hinata-hime?” 

“Y-y-yes, Chouza-s-sama?” Hinata whispered, finally looking up, though her gaze remained firmly fixed somewhere around his left shoulder. 

“The Akimichi compound is always open to visitors, if you want. There’s always plenty to eat.” Chouza smiled, purple tattoos wrinkling with the bend of his wide, round cheeks. Chouji politely hid a grin into the collar of his shirt at Hiashi’s emboldened glare. Starting fires, indeed, he thought.) 

She was a lot better of a communicator than she got credit for, which was something she and Chouji had in common, he supposed. 

“Pardon the mess, I was harvesting sunflowers earlier. It’s sunflower season, y’know.” He swept at the loose petals and leaves that littered the floor, sweeping them into the dust pan along with the pea-sized flower buds that had escaped the confines of the kitchen compost bin. “It’s just about lunch time, anyhow. No worries.” 

Hinata seems as though she had a lot of worries yet, but the sharp hunch of her shoulders decreased something of a centimeter. Chouji counted that as a win. 

“Anything in particular you’d like? I’m sure I can find a peach recipe somewhere.” He knew for a fact that there was a recipe card for peach cobbler amongst all the worn wooden boxes and hard-backed recipe books that had been passed down for generations, sitting in their own special cupboard over the fridge. They were used often and showed clear signs of love. His great-great-great grandpa’s recipe book, from the eleventh Cho- of the legendary Ino-Shika-Cho trios himself, featured a key role in many of Chouji’s fondest memories. 

But peach cobbler was not exactly something one had as the main course of a lunch, especially not a lunch in an Akimichi house, and especially not a lunch for an Akimichi who had spent the past several hours harvesting sunflowers. There was sweat dried in tacky lines at Chouji’s hairline and beneath his shirt, but he wasn’t about to abandon his houseguest to go shower. That was just bad manners. 

“U-uhm….” Hinata trailed off, still clutching the basket of peaches against her stomach like an anchor. He waited for her to finish with a brow slightly raised. He knew from conversations with Neji regarding his cousin’s bashful nature and fluctuating stutter that sometimes the words just got stuck, for lack of a better word, and it was best to just wait her out instead of attempting to finish her sentence for her. 

(Really, Neji had implied something much more violent from his own hand if someone tried that within range of his hearing, considering Hinata wasn’t about to threaten any of her companions on her own.) 

Hinata shakes her head fervently, finally setting the basket down onto the kitchen island and sliding into a stool behind it, across from Chouji’s position at the stove. He was already sifting through the pots and pans in the drawer beneath the oven with a great clanging of metal, not unlike that of the metallic pangs filtering from the compound blacksmith at all hours of the day, wedged in a corner located away from the residential district and near the bigger of the training grounds. 

“It’s just us, does grilled chicken sound good?” Chouji hums, setting the pan aside (his favorite) and moving to sift through the chest fridge-freezer that housed their meats. “Chouichi is on a mission, Pa is visiting friends, and the baby cousins are still helping Granna with the harvest. Ma is at work, so I doubt she’ll be home for a while, either.” 

Hinata nods. Chouji smiles. 

“Wanna help? I need at least four peaches cleaned and sliced. Here, you can use Chouichi’s knife, just don’t tell him.” Chouji winks conspiratorially, and Hinata’s shoulders soften another centimeter. 

She nods fervently, sliding off the stool and running a hand along the counter as she moves in Chouji’s direction. He set out a cutting board for her and Chouichi’s small chef’s knife on top of it, blade covered. “The sink is to your left, by the way.” 

Hinata hums a thanks, puttering in soft-step about the kitchen. Chouji couldn’t help but think she looks awfully at ease, here, in her soft lilac knee-length dress and its creme sailor collar and lacy trimmings, slippered feet near silent on the wood. She was shorter than him because nearly everyone was, save for his older brother and a few cousins, but deceptively muscular underneath the perfunctory layer of softness she carried. It made sense, considering she was a taijutsu user and did as much melee fighting as he himself did, if not more, but everything about her demeanor did not suggest the strength he knew her to possess. He’d seen her bodily lift Kiba, at one point, even as her teammate yelled in excitement and wriggled victoriously. 

(“Bet you a thousand yen Hinata can’t lift you all the way off the ground.” 

“Prepare to be wrong and a thousand yen poorer, Naruto! Hey, Hina! Catch me!” 

“K-K-Kib-- d-don’t r-r-rush me like th-tha-that!” 

“But you caught me, didn’t you?” 

“I’ll a-al-always catch y-you, K-Ki-K-Kiba.”) 

He’d have to ask her to a spar, sometime, but preferably not when she had a knife in her hand. 

They moved about the kitchen quietly, with occasional murmured directionals from Chouji as he moved around her, or a warning not to lift her head because a hot pan was passing over it. She thanked him quietly, because she was always quiet, for the meal, adding a promise to pay him back for it somehow. He laughed it off, saying the peaches fresh from the Hyuuga gardens were payment enough, but if she had her heart set on it then she could come by the same time next week to shuck sunflowers. 

“C-c-can I b-br-... br-bring a friend?” she asks. 

“Of course! Many hands make merry work.” 

She smiles, shoulders no longer hunched, and he beams back. 

Exactly a week has passed when Hinata shows up again, just past noon, standing on the doorstep with Shino trailing behind her. She knocks hesitantly on the front door, though Chouji has already seen the two of them considering he’s coming around the side of the house with metal buckets full of dried sunflower heads from his cousins. 

“Hey! Good to see you!” he calls, hefting a bucket higher on his shoulder, another two clutched in his other hand by the skinny metal handles. It’s cutting into the calluses of his palm, but he’s nearly to the backyard anyhow, where the shucking is to commence. The compost pile has been recently turned in preparation for the dried heads after they’ve been shucked of seeds, and another bucket sits empty in wait for the pseudoflower leaves. A wooden bin that nearly comes up to Chouji’s thigh is where the seeds will be gathered, sitting in the center of the stone patio like an altar awaiting sacrifice. 

Hinata turns with a smile and a wave, dressed in loose pants that flutter softly around her ankles and a frilly blouse, buttoned up past her collarbone. Shino is in his usual high-coverage garb, which, Chouji can only wonder how he doesn’t melt in all that under the heat. Chouji almost feels underdressed, in his worn-out t-shirt from Chouichi’s closet and a pair of denim overalls with threadbare holes in the knees. 

“Come help me carry this, one of you,” Chouji says, offering up the bucket slung over his shoulder and motioning in the direction of the backyard with a jerk of his head. Hinata hurries to take it from him, not so much as stumbling under its weight. Chouji grins. “We’re going to the backyard, everything’s already set up. I have some extra gloves if you want them, but I usually go at it barehanded.” 

“You do this often?” Shino asks, though it's in that monotone manner of his, where it only comes out as a question because of the content of the sentence. His hands are still stuck firmly in his pockets, expression blank, though the constant low murmur of buzzing that accompanies him wherever he goes picks up in volume as they enter the backyard and the garden comes into view. 

“Every year!” Chouji beams. “I’ll take you out to see the sunflower fields sometime, if you want.” 

The buzzing picks up into a hum. “I would like that.” 

Hinata snorts into her collar. Shino flushes, ducking further behind his own high collar for cover. Chouji just continues to grin. 

The buckets go down with a clang, no few sunflower heads spilling out and rolling across the stone. Shino’s kikaichu helpfully lift them back into the buckets and Chouji throws a thanks over his shoulder. He presents them each with a pair of canvas gardening gloves, “Here. Might wanna roll those sleeves up, too, else you’ll get seeds down them. Trust me, they stick around for ages. I think my cousins are still finding them from last harvest.” 

Hinata giggles, just a little, and slips on the proffered gloves. Shino’s hands finally emerge from his pockets to do the same, which is a rare occurrence in and of its own, considering he hardly needs to twitch a finger to conduct his insects. Chouji’s hands are thick in all directions with calluses, rough and wide like an otsuchi hammer, like the weapon he’s always likened himself and his family to ever since he learned about it. He thinks if his life path were slightly different, he could’ve been a deadly kenjustu master with an otsuchi. 

“Alright, so just grab one of these--” he picks up a sunflower head in example, right hand fisted around the blunt stem still attached to it-- “and hold it like a hammer. Then you just-- clap it.” 

He demonstrates as he talks, patting the face of the sunflower head with just enough force to shake the seeds loose and into the bin. They fall to the bottom with a clatter, like the rare pebble-sized hail storms that ravage Konoha every few winters. “No need to be too rough, we aren’t trying to crush anything.” 

“No Gentle Fist, Hinata,” Shino murmurs out of the side of his mouth, making Hinata giggle and Chouji’s grin widen impossibly further. He likes this side of Shino that he’s seen so far, sarcastic and wry and personable, unlike the stoic, stiff, formal person he’s used to on missions. Not that Shino is any less stiff, with the way he’s bent over the sunflower head with weedy, tall shoulders curled just so inwards, brow furrowed just slightly over the circular lenses of his frameless shades. 

“S-s-seems like a b-b-- a b-b-big b-bin for all these s-s-seeds.” Hinata says, finishing with her first flower as Chouji’s moving onto his third. He tosses the used head over Shino’s, and it lands with a satisfying crunch in the middle of the compost heap. Shino’s eyes are comically wide behind his glasses, what little of them Chouji can see through his dark lashes. 

“It’ll fill up faster than you think,” Chouji assures her. She hums, and picks up another flower. 

Time passes in companionable silence between the three of them. Neither Shino nor Hinata are big talkers, which Chouji is fine with, as he’s willing to meet his friends wherever they’re most comfortable. He’s spent entire days with Shikamaru in near silence-- but perhaps that isn’t the best example, considering Chouji shares a near telepathic bond with his teammates. 

But that might just be a side effect of Ino’s kekkai genkai, now that he thinks about it. 

They’re halfway through the first bucket when Shino speaks up. “Your family seem very good gardeners.” 

Chouji hums, dusting leftover pollen off his hands onto the front of his overalls and doubtlessly leaving behind a faint yellow smear on worn denim. “Well, considering the Yamanaka are famously good with flowers, I’d hope it’s not all that surprising. But we’re more oriented towards food gardening than flowers. Easier to get fresh ingredients when they’re growing in your backyard.” 

“D-do y-y-you grow the sunf-f-flowers f-f-f-- f-for f-food too?” Hinata asks, head cocked curiously. 

“Ah, well,” Chouj feels a nervous flush rise to his cheeks and the tips of his ears, because he’s never really told anyone outside of the clan about their superstitions and traditions before. They seem kind of silly, now, even as long as his family has performed them, and the fact that there’s a type of flowering plant in the garden dedicated to each member of the head family. Chouji’s is a cluster of forget-me-nots, next to Chouichi’s Japanese camellia’s and Chouza’s rhododendrons. His grandma Choukichi’s tea plants sit behind them, next to a bush that Chouji can’t remember the name of, not since the placard was removed when he was a child. It had belonged to his aunt, his father’s older brother. Choukichi has been tending the mystery plant ever since, but it wilts more and more each year. 

“Sort of? I mean, we make food out of them, sure, and the stalks are great for weaving baskets when they’ve dried-- you can even eat them fresh! They taste a bit like celery. But we didn’t originally start planting sunflowers for food, no.” His whole face is red by now, he’s sure. Hinata waits with a patient, open expression on her face, and though Shino’s expression is no less placid than usual there’s an inquisitive tilt to his brow. Chouji takes it as a sign to continue. 

“Back when the Akimichis and Naras and Yamanakas originally settled in Konoha, we, ah, started some traditions.” He clears his throat, moves onto a new dried head. The seeds pitter-patter onto the bottom of the bin. “When an Akimichi is born, their parents are supposed to plant a sunflower for them, in the sunflower fields. If the sunflower thrives, so will the baby. If it dies, well….” 

“Wh-what if they d-do-d-don’t plant a sunf-flower?” Hinata asks, and her voice is barely above a whisper. Chouji shrugs. The answer tastes bitter and acrid in the back of his throat. He tries very hard not to think about his deadbeat grandfather, and how he refused to plant a sunflower for Chouji’s late aunt. 

“They don’t usually survive. Those are always the Akimichi that die first in battle, or the babies just fail to thrive. We put sunflowers on their graves, so they might grow high to meet the sun in death, even though they didn’t in life.” 

“Is that why you use the sunflowers, because they’re so tall?” Shino asks, the barest edge of humor in the edge of his voice, like the sharp edge of a knife glinting in the late summer afternoon sun. 

“Yeah. There aren’t hardly any plants that grow so tall on their own. It’s hard to find a flower that represents your clan when you’re bigger than all of them could ever hope to be.” 

“Wh-wh-what do you make with the sunf-fl-flowers?” Hinata asks, and she’s smiling now. There’s something peaceful about it that Chouji had failed to notice before, or perhaps it simply wasn’t there. Hinata has always been a fairly anxious person, always hiding her face as it flushed red and stammering with nerves and toeing the dirt like she was fit to run away if someone didn’t grab her by the arm and anchor her down with them. Every one of the few times Chouji has been to the Hyuuga compound, it seemed to multiply, the anxiety within her. Sitting at her father’s side with head bowed, still and perfect as a porcelain doll, silken hair drawn up in a bun and hands fisted in the long sleeves of her kimono. 

But she seems alive, here, now. Her cheeks are warm and flushed, not with shame or anger but happiness, holding a sunflower in one hand with a pair of gloves that are two-sizes too-big on her. Chouji wonders how he hasn’t noticed it before, the ease in her shoulders and her face and her voice when she’s around friends, around Shino, even around him. It makes something warm bloom in his chest, unfurl till its filling the space in his sternum, curling around his ribs. 

“Sunflower butter, and oil. I like to use it in my peach cobbler.” 

Hinata beams. Chouji smiles. Shino’s insects hum. 

In the Akimichi compound, there is a field of sunflowers. In every Akimichi home, there is room for more.

**Author's Note:**

> this is just almost 4k words of me writing about chouji and hinata being friends, because i think there's a lot of space for them to bond! theyre both primarily melee fighters/taijutsu users that get brushed over a lot and both of them deal with lack of confidence, both in themselves and from others about their abilities. they also both happen to be some of my favorite characters haha  
> thanks so much for reading! as always, questions, concrit, and concerns are always welcome in the comments! i hope you're all staying safe <3


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